Sign of the Apocalypse: Facebook Status Update Optioned for a Movie

The life of a screenwriter or novelist is a wretched series of false starts, incessant rejection, and caffeine. Next week's food budget dependent on a silent cell phone and an empty inbox. Blank documents. Overflowing ashtrays. Quarter-filled bottles of Jack. Physical and mental health teetering on the brink of total collapse.

Moments of happiness are few and far between -- though you might feel a brief glimmer of hope after composing a perfectly worded sentence after 4 hours of agony.

Then you hear about a Facebook status update being optioned for a book series and everything comes crashing down again.

New York literary agency Fletcher and Company recently saw a delightful status update about a dog. Based on actual events, the entry explained that the user's Pomeranian dove into a Chinese takeout bag and managed to open and consume a fortune cookie. Though it's already a gripping narrative, the update hasn't yet reached its climax, which comes when the reader learns what the fortune said: "You have strong spiritual powers, and you should develop them."

The owner and writer of the update is Lisa Hamilton Day -- a former exec at Dreamworks (DWA) and a close personal friend of Christy Fletcher. Convenient, no?

Surprisingly, the adaptation needs to be expanded -- probably for those brain-dead mainstream audiences who can't be entertained for 200 pages by a dog and some leftover lo mein. As it stands now, the story will revolve around Charlotte -- a Pomeranian with newfound superpowers who must prevent her owner from moving in with her parents after losing her job. (The extent of a dog's superpowers is apparently very limited.)

But in the interest of struggling screenwriters and unpublished novelists, here are some perfect ideas for films and book series that could stem from a brief synopsis on a typical Facebook profile.
 

• After learning from a Facebook quiz that, were a Simpsons character, he would be Milhouse, a college student is subjected to cosmic gamma rays, turning him into an animated anthropomorphic wolf. He has only 24 hours to change back. But does he want to?
  
  
• Bored at work and wishing she were back on the beach, an assistant to a fashion designer is suddenly whisked away on a business trip to Paris. There she meets a dashing member of Parliament who's on the run from the Japanese Yakuza.
  
  
• The cover for a Mafia informant in the Witness Protection Program is blown after he's tagged in a photo taken at his nephew's birthday party, leaving him at risk of being "poked" by the men he sent to prison.